“He vetoed our highest priority,” said Ortman said, who also is deputy majority leader. “I think there will be consequences. I think that he has lost the trust of many of my colleagues in the Legislature.”

That may well be true, of course. The real question is if such anger is justified.

Is it unusual for one side or the other to get shut out on their top priority for a session? Hardly. All you have to do is go all the way back to last year — when Gov. Dayton’s top priority was to close the state’s sizable deficit using a balanced package that consisted of about 75% spending cuts and 25% revenue increases. Did he get that? No way — the final deal instead borrowed from our schools and sold out future tobacco settlement revenues.

Yet, despite that, Dayton has worked with Republicans and agreed to compromise on some significant issues — including permitting and health and human services reforms. Dayton has also indicated willingness to sign some elements of the Republicans’ tax bill into law.

That’s the nature of divided government. Your top priority is probably going to be real low on the other side’s list. But the job description isn’t to punt when the top priority is off-the-table. Real leaders double down their efforts in those times and do the best they can for their party and their state. Too many Republicans seem content at this point to walk away with nothing — no tax bill, no bonding bill, and no Vikings stadium. Minnesotans should expect better.

7 Responses to “You can’t always get what you want”

We have this goofball governor because people liked his family’s 13 hour sale. And this is what you get when you vote on name recognition. What a petty hack. He’s still ticked off about Ellen Anderson. And you call our folks angry. You make me laugh.

He says he wants to create jobs. This bill would have created more jobs than the bonding bill and Vikings stadium combined. Which in turn will actually generate more revenue for MN, I might add. the tax cuts might have even paid for themselves. And yeah, while this goes against every fiber of Dayton tax and spend being, I guess there was some hope that he’d want to get more people back to work. Only if the state is providing the jobs, I guess.

And yeah, he’s still throwing tabntrums every week since the Ellen Anderson thing. He has absolutely no desire to work with us on anything, as was seen with his ridiculous veto of the school payback.

There’s very little evidence that the tax bill would do anything significant in regards to job creation and we know that tax cuts don’t pay for themselves — heck, even conservative economists admit that.